In our intro, we talked about how visions create leverage in 3 ways.

Visions cultivate a needle-moving product ambition, empower your team to make independent decisions, and gain leadership buy-in to execute on longer-term wins that might not yield immediate results.

In our previous lesson, we walked through how visions also need to have 4 key attributes: Aspirational, Detailed, Opinionated and User-centric.

In this lesson, we’ll cover how to develop a great vision that meets these criteria and creates these sources of leverage, using a 3 step process.

In order to write a compelling vision that is aspirational, detailed, opinionated, and user-centric, we have to depart from the conventional wisdom of visions. 

The conventional wisdom for vision creation is to create a vision statement: a short, pithy sentence that is supposed to encapsulate the entirety of your product ambition in a single line.

The idea is to make your statement short, so your vision is more memorable. Since people only have one impactful sentence to recall, they’ll be more likely to recall it. 

However, trying to compress the entirety of your vision into a single statement often result in the loss of two of your major sources of vision leverage:

Team Empowerment: vision statements aren’t very empowering for your team. 

Leadership Buy-In: vision statements don’t get the true alignment you need for leadership buy-in.

The first problem is that vision statements aren’t empowering for your team, because they usually are far too vague to make concrete decisions on. 

Your team can’t meaningfully make near and middle-term trade-off decisions based on something so high level. As such, you remain the bottleneck in decision-making. 

For example, consider Microsoft's vision statement: "To enable people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential."

If this is the only guiding vision, it could result in the team having an unclear picture of what they’re actually building towards. This, in turn, prevents the team from being able to make smart trade-offs. 

They have to instead turn to the PM team to clarify each decision, making the PMs a bottleneck.

To illustrate this, let’s imagine you are on the design team at Microsoft. You are working on Skype and you need to decide whether your interface design should be business-oriented (meeting-focused) or consumer-oriented (audio-calls focused).

It’s unclear how to make that decision using this vision: "To enable people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential." An audio-call focused interface seems like it’ll enable people to realize their full potential. A meeting-focused interface seems like it’ll enable businesses to realize their full potential.

If you choose one direction, but the team decides to go in another direction, then you have a lot of rework. You either have to proceed and hope that your guess is right, or wait for the PM to clarify the decision.

If this direction was clarified in the vision, you could make this decision independently. 

However, as it stands, the vision is far too vague to do so, and you are disempowered as a result. 

This is frustrating for you, as the designer. It also lowers leverage for the PM, because they have to spend the time clarifying which is more important. 

The second problem with vision statements is that they don’t get the true alignment you need for leadership buy-in.

Sachin Rekhi says: “In my experience, vision statements end up actually being less memorable and less likely to get true leadership alignment. That's because in summarizing the entirety of the vision in a short and pithy vision statement, so much of the important context around it is lost.”

In other words, vision statements rarely have enough time to build a compelling story on why the problem you’re solving is needle-moving. 

As a result, leadership might not fully understand how needle-moving your vision is, making it difficult for you to get the appropriate resourcing for it.

To illustrate this, let’s examine Netflix again. Recall that in 2007, Netflix underwent a massive transition of its business model, pivoting from exclusively renting DVD into streaming entertainment over the internet. 

Netflix’s CEO, Reed Hastings, had to convince the board that they had to shift their model. He needed their leadership buy-in. 

Netflix’s vision statement is: “Becoming the best global entertainment distribution service”.

This vision statement alone had nowhere near enough detail to convince the board that they needed to invest in streaming in order to become the best global entertainment distribution service.

After all, streaming was an extremely nascent technology with low consumer demand at the time. 

Reed Hastings had to explain why internet streaming was a critical problem to solve. He had to detail how consumers would inevitably want an easier method to access their entertainment, and how advances in bandwidth made this change inevitable.

Only by fully explaining the magnitude of the problem was Netflix able to gain buy-in to make the massive pivot towards streaming. 

In order to solve the conventional problems with vision statements, write a vision narrative instead.

A vision narrative is a 1-2 page written narrative that outlines your vision in detail.

Like a compelling story, there are three major phases to create a great vision narrative.


A great vision narrative starts off by painting an aspirational problem in detail, goes on to explain a detailed and opinionated solution, and closes with a user-centric resolution.

Let’s examine the relationship between vision narrative structure and how it creates leverage, starting with 
the aspirational problem. An aspirational problem helps you identify a needle-moving product ambition.  Since you are tackling a big problem, it’s likely you’ll have needle-moving product outcomes if you can solve it.

Next, having a detailed and opinionated solution better empowers your team. 

In contrast to vision statements, you have significantly more room to express how you think about solving the problem.

This in turn makes it far clearer to the team what they need to do in order to achieve that goal.

It also removes you as a bottleneck to independent decisions.  

Finally, creating a user-centric resolution helps better earn leadership buy-in. 

After building up a big aspirational problem and detailing a solution, you want to highlight the impact that your solution will have.

A vision narrative creates the space for you to build up the tension of a big problem, and then sharply release that tension with a resolution. 

This in turns helps leadership understand how compelling your problem is, and increases the likelihood you get their buy-in to pursue your vision.

To illustrate this, consider Lyft’s vision narrative, laid out in Lyft co-founder John Zimmer’s article, The Third Transportation Revolution.

In this vision narrative, John Zimmer first details an aspirational problem.

Cars have revolutionized transport, but have also made communities far more cut-off.

He argues that the root cause of community cut-off is the inefficiency of car ownership. Cars require infrastructure like parking lots and street-side parking, and as such, they’ve forced out community spaces and housing.

Because he’s using a vision narrative format instead of a vision statement, John Zimmer fully explains the aspiration of the challenge that Lyft wants to tackle.

He doesn’t leave the problem at a high-level place with a statement like “Lyft will contribute to more humanistic communities via excellence in car sharing.”

Instead, he really illustrates the problem with statements like “Look at how much land is devoted to cars — and nothing else. We’ve built our communities entirely around cars. And for the most part, we’ve built them for cars that aren’t even moving.”

Going through the aspirational problem, it becomes clear that Lyft can solve a major, needle-moving problem with its car sharing vision.

Then, the vision narrative continues with a detailed and opinionated solution.

To solve these challenges associated with the current transportation paradigm, he proposes a completely different paradigm: transportation subscriptions.

John Zimmer goes into detail on this solution, explaining that Lyft specifically needs to: “Shift to autonomous cars...transforming transportation into the ultimate subscription service”

He further explains: “In a future subscription model, the network will cover all of these costs [fuel, maintenance, parking, and insurance]”

Understanding the vision to this level of detail empowers Lyft’s team.

It helps them better determine the short-term roadmap changes they need to make to get to subscription autonomous cars, and removes the Product team as a decision-making bottleneck.

Instead of spending all their roadmap on driver management, for example, they would start dedicating time towards thinking how to ease users towards the subscription model.

 And finally, the resolution.

In this new car-less world, spaces dedicated to human interaction instead of car stationing will spring up again, leading to happier, healthier communities for all.

He really goes into depth on how users will benefit from this vision: 

“A world with less traffic and less pollution. A world where we need less parking — where streets can be narrowed and sidewalks widened. It’s a world where we can construct new housing and small businesses on parking lots across the country — or turn them into green spaces and parks. That’s a world built around people, not cars.”

After building up such tension with his initial painting of the problem, John Zimmer is able to use the vision narrative format to fully and sharply contrast the benefits of his solution.

This emotional contrast, enabled by the narrative format, appears to have worked in getting Lyft’s leadership approval.

Since the narrative release, Lyft has actively moved towards at least a subscription model with Lyft passes and has begun moving towards autonomous cars with the announcement of autonomous vehicle rides starting in Miami.  

In order to write your vision narrative, recall the 3-step approach to building your narrative: describe an aspirational problem, explain a detailed and opinionated solution, and close with a user-centric resolution.

These steps are tracked in the Reforge Vision Narrative Template for follow-along and application. We'll walk through each step of the framework and you can apply each concept as we go.

First, think about what the aspirational problem that you solve is. 

‘For [target audience], solving [problem] would be needle-moving because [reason].’ For example, Lyft’s answer to this prompt might be “For [community members], solving [the problem of no community spaces] would be needle-moving, because [so much community space has disappeared to car infrastructure].’

To convert this single thought into a vision narrative intro, illustrate the problem in more detail.

Just as a good story engages you with a gripping situation, a good vision narrative will engage your audience with a compelling problem. 

To build up the tension and get stakeholders emotionally engaged, think about how to bring the problem you solve to life.

Some great ways to add emotion to issues are to use: Anecdotes, Videos, Direct Quotes, and Thought Exercises.

We can see this technique at work in Lyft’s ‘The Third Transportation Revolution’ vision narrative.

In the vision narrative, co-founder John Zimmer asks the reader to go through a thought exercise: ‘Next time you walk outside, pay really close attention to the space around you... Look at how much land is devoted to cars — and nothing else.’ 

By having the reader experience and be present firsthand with the problem, he makes the reader keenly aware of the magnitude and stakes of the problem at hand. 

Notejoy’s collaboration features vision uses similar techniques to emotionally engage the user. The vision narrative starts with an anecdote of how social media has unlocked powerful movements like Black Lives Matter, and moments like the relevant early awareness of coronavirus. 

It compares this to the comparatively sluggish pace of ideas within organizations.

This contrast creates tension: How much organizational potential is waiting to be unlocked by better ways to spread ideas?

Remember that to make the problem compelling, it should feel large.

Since achieving your vision is measured in terms of years instead of months, a good guideline is that your problem shouldn’t just be what you’re solving in the next quarter; rather, it should be something that will require steady chipping away at over a longer time-horizon. 

We recommend thinking about what the compelling problem you may want to solve is, and noting it in the Reforge Vision Narrative Template. 

Then, after you have sufficiently framed and built up the problem, lay out your detailed and opinionated solution for how the future would look.

Since your goal is to create something ambitious and not just limited by your short-term feasibility constraints, actively encourage your team to think bigger. To do so, consider the following thought exercises while brainstorming your solution: 

What could our product look like if we relaxed the typical constraints (resources, timeline, feasibility)?

What could our product look like if we had massive adoption? What could our product look like if it was a movement? Where is our industry headed, and how would our product look if it was leading the industry?

Let’s examine how these prompts have helped real companies come up with their vision. Let’s first look at the relaxing typical constraints prompt.

Consider 23AndMe. 23AndMe is a genetics and health company that helps people understand what genetics predispose them to in terms of health risks. 

23AndMe started off as solely a genetic testing company, but its vision is to help people fully understand and benefit from the human genome.

Instead of thinking about the near-term commercial viability of what its existing research could do, 23AndMe thought about the full potential of what human genome research could achieve.

The company is still working towards its vision, constantly increasing the ability to tell you about your genetics.

Now let’s illustrate how thinking about massive adoption helps. Think about Tesla.

Tesla is an electric car manufacturer and clean energy company. Tesla started off as a luxury sports car company, but their vision is to help transition the world towards clean energy. 

To date, it’s progressed towards this vision with the launch of more mass market electric vehicle models, like the Model 3.

It continues to move towards this vision with the creation of efficient battery energy storage devices for the home. 

Our next prompt was to imagine your product as a movement. 

Airbnb is an online marketplace for booking lodging and travel experiences, and is a good example of a company vision based on imagining itself as a wider movement.

 

Airbnb started off as a temporary stay search engine, but its larger vision is to help people belong anywhere.

To date, Airbnb has focused a lot of their products by not just helping people find homes, but also helping them discover local experiences. 

The most well-known stride towards this is Airbnb Experiences, which connects travelers to locals for said experiences. 

And finally let’s examine an industry trends-based vision. 

Consider Netflix. Entertainment subscriptions increasingly go towards those who can create high quality, original programming. 

Instead of staying stuck in entertainment licensing deals, Netflix pivoted away from that and became a content creation studio. 

It is now known for Netflix Originals, a collection of high quality, original programming directly funded by Netflix. 

Remember that your solution should be detailed and opinionated so that your vision doesn’t remain a high-level document; instead, you want your vision to become a useful guiding North Star for day-to-day product decisions.

These details should help articulate how you are going to grow from where you are today to the future. This keeps it from being a high-level document that is disconnected from your current reality.

A great way to keep your vision tied to day-to-day reality is to ground your solution in your product strategy. Your vision helps you win in the long-term, while your product strategy helps you win in the short-middle term. 

By building your long-term vision on a strategy designed to help you win in the short-middle term, you ensure continuity. In other words, your long-term work doesn’t require a massive jump from what you’re immediately working on and benefitting from.

What this means in practice is that your vision solution should be aligned to your product strategy.

For example, consider how Lyft’s vision ties to strategy. Lyft’s solution directly builds off of its target audience - its current rider base. It also aligns with the same fundamental problem Lyft is solving - helping carless users move places. Lyft’s current value proposition is also affordable transportation anytime, which would continue in the new program.

And finally, the vision builds directly on Lyft’s strategic differentiation. 

Lyft already excels in operational excellence and fleet management at scale; this would be further extended with a subscription program. 

By building a vision on strategic dimensions, Lyft ensures it will be able to survive the mid-term and see the long-term play out. 

At a smaller scale, Notejoy’s collaboration vision also has details that align with its product strategy. 

Notejoy’s collaboration vision outlines a social media-like collaboration experience, with note reactions, notifications, @ mentions, library overview, and weekly newsletters.

This vision is still built for Notejoy’s target audience of non-tech SMBs. The vision still solves the same problem: easy, scalable knowledge-sharing. The vision directly builds on Notejoy’s value proposition of "fast and focused notes for your team." Specifically, the social nature of the vision directly improves Notejoy’s sub-value proposition of "collaborate like they’re in the room." By democratizing idea spread, each idea has a chance to be equally heard.

Finally, the vision leans into Notejoy’s strategic differentiation: having the user insight and know-how to design a great collaborative productivity app. 

Creating a product that meets requirements from both a collaboration and a productivity perspective is difficult. If Notejoy can successfully execute its vision, it’ll have further differentiated itself in product design and functionality from its competition.

Take the time here to jot down some notes on what detailed and opinionated solution you might have for your vision on the Reforge Vision Narrative Template.

Finally, after detailing your problem and solution, close with the story resolution.

Explain how the world is different once your vision has been pushed to completion. Remember, the key is to make the audience feel how needle-moving your problem is. The same strategies used to make the problem feel big can be used to help magnify the feeling of resolution - i.e. anecdotes, videos, direct quotes, and thought exercises.

You can see this in Lyft’s vision narrative. They start off with a detailed description of the new world: ‘‘Eventually, we’ll be able to turn parking lots back into parks. We’ll be able to shrink streets, expand sidewalks...That means more local shops and small businesses, more shared spaces, and more vibrant communities. This translates to better cities — and better lives — for people all over the world."

They then support this with photo examples of the change. They show San Francisco before and after community renovation, creating a concrete idea of how spaces change in this new world.

Similarly, Notejoy’s collaboration vision also closes in an emotionally-impactful way. After building up a storyline of how a humble, grassroots idea generated social momentum in an organization, it simply closes with “the VP adds a comment: Love this. When can this happen?” The steady emotional build-up of the story culminates in an official sign-off, illustrating the possibilities of a more collaborative future.

Note down what your user-centric resolution is on your Reforge Vision Narrative Template. 

In this lesson we covered how vision statements tend to fall short in giving you the full sources of leverage you’d normally get from your vision.

Instead of writing a vision statement, we walked through how to write a vision narrative, which has 3 parts: an aspirational problem, a detailed and opinionated solution, and a user-centric resolution.

Vision narratives alone aren’t enough to get your vision executed, though. You also need to socialize it properly with leadership to really get buy-in.

In the next lesson, we’ll cover how to do this.